


Altars Barbarous Below

by Petra LeMaitre (Petra)



Category: Eastwick (TV)
Genre: Multi, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:19:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra%20LeMaitre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Darryl had to do to keep the women safe from themselves was to keep them apart or, failing that, distracted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Altars Barbarous Below

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DV-Skitz](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=DV-Skitz).



> Thanks to Carla, Scy, and Sionnain for prereading and betareading.

He knew who he was, once, and then another time, and another. But even in the Sixties--Eighteen, Seventeen, Nineteen, Sixteen, pick your Sixties--he couldn't find himself, didn't know where to look, exactly.

The mirror was no help. It always showed the same face, not quite Dorian Gray because that young man remained always young, and youth was a weakness disguised as a blessing. Humans responded to authority more effectively in the guise of an older man, and he gave them that, even when he had forgotten his own name again.

His name was in the papers, or a name was, going back and back to the beginning days of the town where he knew himself. Whenever the stars were right and the moon set just so, he knew that name again and went to find the buried treasure it represented. He also knew to the depths of his being that it had never been his true name, and that anyone who whispered it three times over a fire at midnight would get nothing more than a faceful of smoke.

No one had known his true name in the world for longer than the records ran, though they went back and back in the place where some of the women knew him, some of the time, where he let them know him enough to be interesting. Some of them were strong enough to be dangerous to themselves and their quiet, magic-blind world, dangerous enough together that if they were left unchecked they might find themselves burnt at the stake, or if they survived long enough to learn something, they could become more than humans ought to be, more, perhaps, than he was.

The flickers of belief and strength he saw in them were too valuable to waste that way. They were human; they needed to be used, to be loved, and while he could not do the latter, the former was easy.

All he had to do to keep them safe from themselves was to keep them apart or, failing that, distracted.

There were songs and poems for that, verses best whispered in a witch's ear at midnight, if the three of them would only listen. These modern children were flighty at best when it came to such things, and any promises he made them of greater heights, they mocked and fled.

If heights weren't to their taste, there were always depths. All it took was the right words in the dead of night, pushing the possible to probable and the probable to inevitable.

The phrases had to be right, and they were not for waking minds. It took some searching to find the right ones, and even then it was best to have a fallback plan. The strongest push could create a desire in the unwilling, but it was also likely to alert those who might try to interfere that something was going on. It was easiest and wisest to find the path that each woman could reasonably take to the endpoint he wanted for them.

For Joanna, tangled in her solitary bed, a promise: "I'll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind; if I can--if any one could. Then perhaps in the dark you'll have got what you want to find." They weren't his words, and they were stronger for that, spoken over a conjured bowl of water that reflected Joanna's rumpled bed. She whimpered in her sleep as the spell settled. By morning, she would remember only that she wanted, not why. Moreover, she wouldn't fight the desire, though it would leave her essentially powerless--by her own understanding of her powers--and surrounded by those who had no apparent weaknesses. Blindness for Joanna, and let her seek some true release in an unlikely direction.

For Kat, reaching still for her unlamentably absent husband, a verse like a knife: "I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse. I ponder on the narrow house. I shudder at the thought of men....I'm due to fall in love again." Her image turned over in the still water, showing her brow creased. He touched the surface and she sighed and smiled in her sleep, the stress fading. The water did not ripple. Yearning for Kat, wearing away the jaded, injured edges of her romantic soul.

Roxie was the hardest to reach, for all she was the easiest to touch in the flesh. He said four verses over her sleeping mind, but she resisted the Shakespeare, the Keats, the Dickinson, and nearly woke up at the Wordsworth, batting at her ears as if midwinter mosquitoes attacked her.

Enough, then, with beginning as things were supposed to go on. There was a warning in her words, but no false hope. The pattern was all she needed.

"All I could see from where I stood was three long mountains and a wood; I turned and looked the other way, and saw three islands in a bay. So with my eyes I traced the line of the horizon, thin and fine, straight around till I was come back to where I'd started from; and all I saw from where I stood was three long mountains and a wood."

Roxie needed a vision more than she needed desire; she wanted enough for all of them, and she had enough faith in herself that she would bring it all together under the impression that the whole thing was fated.

The threes made her sigh and shift, and the enchantment held.

He smiled.

*

Roxie stretched out her arms and kissed Kat, who was laughing and squirming at the same time while Joanna cupped her breasts and nuzzled the back of her neck. They were sprawled across Roxie's bed, the covers all askew, and the bedside lamp was on, lighting everything in a pool of yellow light that made Kat look even more angelic than normal.

"Well, well, well," Darryl said, sounding smug, and it was as though someone had taken all the air out of the room.

Roxie turned to look at him, one hand still stroking Kat's soft hair, and woke up.

She sat upright in bed--her lonely, dark bed, with the alarm clock reading 3:04AM--and said, "Fuck." Most of the visions she'd been having made her wish that she could go back to ignoring her dreams, especially the ones involving the funeral she hadn't been able to prevent.

The warm tangle of limbs in her bed that wasn't actually there felt like the opposite of the funeral. Instead of feeling inevitable, it felt impossible. Joanna had made the occasional reference to her college days, sure, but Kat was as pure as anybody with that many kids could manage to be, or at least as straight.

It wasn't like Roxie really wanted them like that, anyway, she told herself, trying to forget how Kat had smelled in her dream. Kissing her had been like walking in the woods in spring, fresh and rich with possibility. Real kisses didn't work that way, and Kat didn't smell much like that, usually.

And there was no way--not even with magic--that Joanna's tongue could feel as good as it had in the dream, or that she'd be shameless enough to make a show of touching herself, grinding against Kat's hands when she reached to help and licking her sticky fingers when she was done. Joanna was gorgeous, but she could be so damn awkward. No reason a little nudity would take care of that problem.

Roxie refused to contemplate the kind of porn movie shenanigans she'd have to get up to to have Darryl walk into her bedroom unannounced, especially if she was already with Kat and Joanna.

She rubbed her eyes and got up. Three steps past her door she remembered how ticked off Mia had been the last time she caught her going to the bathroom in the buff and went back for a robe. Then she had the mental image of Mia running into Joanna at ass-o'clock in the hallway and had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. That would be about as uncomfortable as things could get. Chad had been bad enough, by Mia's estimation, but trading up to a pair of girlfriends would be the ultimate in humiliating mom behavior.

They'd looked so good in her dream, though, kissing each other like they couldn't think of anything they'd like better in the world, then breaking apart and kissing Roxie next.

All day long, the images kept coming back to her, especially when she was trying to do perfectly normal things like grocery shopping. Joanna would like that salad mix better than the other, she'd said something about it, and Joanna liking salad went right into Joanna licking Kat, which was nothing Roxie planned on thinking about in the produce section, but there they were in her head. She pretended to be really interested in the two kinds of garlic and hoped nobody saw her blushing.

For a few hours, she thought about calling Kat and Joanna to make sure that this was all a big mistake, double-check that their heterosexual cred was up to date and there was no way they were going to fall into bed with each other. But after a depressingly quiet dinner--Mia was visiting a friend and the absence of Chad across the table was the loudest thing in the house--Roxie shook her head and grabbed for the phone.

Joanna picked up on the third ring. "Hello?"

"It's Roxie."

Joanna took a quick breath that scattered into static over the line. She'd gasped that way in Roxie's dream, or vision, or whatever it had been. "Is everything okay? Jamie hasn't been bothering you?"

Roxie crossed her legs and tried to focus on the conversation she was having right that moment. "Nothing like that. Just--I could use some company."

"Me too. It's been a really long week--month--anyway, it's just me and my battery-operated boyfriend tonight, and I don't even want to think about how pathetic that makes me when I could be doing all sorts of stuff."

The extent of Joanna's ability to do anything or anyone she wanted made Roxie wince, but the dream-vision hadn't had anything like that. If Roxie or Kat ended up in bed with her, it was because they wanted to.

"You don't need to bring your boyfriend, but come over. I'm going to see if Kat's busy."

"She's not. It's her night off with the whole nest-sharing-whatever-they-call it, so she's probably trying to find something to do that's not worrying about her kids and that deadbeat." Joanna practically spit the last word. "I swear, if I had a husband like that I'd cut his dick right off."

"And we'd help. Anyway, let's have a girls' night in."

"See you in a few."

Roxie smiled at the empty room and went to make sure there was enough wine for the night. She could have been seeing some other time, but if they could get to that kind of point--and a pretty point it was--she figured it would be just as well to get there sooner as later.

*

From the driveway, the lights in Roxie's house looked warm as firelight, though they were all cold, modern illumination that lacked spirit and hope. There was a dusting of snow on the lawn.

He waited on the step until they were entangled in each other, until all they would be able to give him was incoherence painted over raw power, fueled upward by lust until together, they might achieve something.

With enough misdirection--and they did not, would not trust him anywhere near as much as they trusted each other, as it should be--he could steer them where he wanted them. They were too caught up in each other, both dream and truth, to feel the subtle manipulation under the grander machination.

Besides all of that, they were lovely in their own ephemeral right.

Sometimes the old ways were the best.

There was a sigh from Roxie's bedroom and a spike of power, undirected, unmastered--or unmistressed--that he caught. It was like standing in a ray of sunlight, if sunlight was liquid and beautiful, if sunlight entered the pores and made things more possible. Kat. And if the other two had felt that, blinded Joanna and predestined Roxie, they would do it all again whatever he said.

If they realized how much power they had together, if they began to suspect what they could do with it, he would have to break them as he'd had to break too many before.

He opened the bedroom door.

**Author's Note:**

> The poetry is by D. H. Lawrence, Dorothy Parker, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.


End file.
